Cutting public spending by £167bn: a modest but necessary aim (web publication)

In the 31st IEA Current Controversies paper, Philip Booth examines the scale of the public spending cuts required to tackle the UK's budget deficit.

Professor Booth argues that a government committed to a free economy should aim to balance the books without increasing the tax take. In this way, government spending's share of national income could be reduced to below the levels in 1997, when New Labour came to power. The alternative would be for the next government to lock-in the high-tax, high-spend policies of the last decade - a policy which would have extremely negative consequences for the long-term dynamism of the UK economy.